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NFL limits on marijuana still strict, but not really

Erik Brady
USA TODAY Sports
Minnesota Vikings running back Adrian Peterson, who is facing a trial in Texas on a felony child abuse charge, may also have to answer for admitting to a drug test administrator for the court that he had "smoked a little weed" in advance of a court-required test two weeks ago.

Tug McGraw was once asked which he preferred, Astroturf or grass. "I don't know," he said. "I never smoked Astroturf."

That was 1974, when artificial turf was relatively new and he was more famous as a relief pitcher than as Tim McGraw's father. Forty years later, professional athletes don't crack many marijuana jokes in public anymore.

Much of the country is more accepting of cannabis — it is legal for recreational use in two states and for medical use in 23 states plus the District of Columbia — but marijuana remains a banned substance in the NFL, although the league slightly relaxed testing standards in its revised Policy and Program on Substances for Abuse.

The updated policy, announced last month, increased the permitted threshold from 15 nanograms of carboxy THC per milliliter of urine to 35 nanograms.

That's not science-speak for one free joint a week.

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Experts say it's impossible to know how much might be consumed while staying under the limit because there are too many variables, such as potency of marijuana strain and body fat of a player. Besides, says Allen St. Pierre, executive director of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws (NORML), there's just not that much separation between 15 nanograms and 35 nanograms.

"We're talking the difference between 15 parts per billion and 35 parts per billion," he tells USA TODAY Sports. "From a mathematical, forensic point of view, the difference is incredibly slight. Only lawyers and arbitrators and mediators within the NFL system are ever going to appreciate it."

Major League Baseball uses a threshold of 50 nanograms — perhaps the late McGraw would be pleased — while the World Anti-Doping Agency, which does Olympic testing, uses a threshold of 150.

"You don't really start to get any margins of use unless you have a threshold of 50," St. Pierre says.

Ricky Williams, a former Pro Bowl running back, says a 35-nanogram limit would have made a world of difference to him. "If that was the threshold when I was in the NFL, I never would have been in the drug program," he says.

Williams, who was suspended twice, once for a full season, estimates that roughly 40% of NFL players use marijuana for pain and stress relief during any given season. And he thinks the NFL's testing policy offers a free pass for players to do so —by simply passing an offseason test.

NFL players are tested once a year — for marijuana, opiates, amphetamines and other illegal drugs — between April 20 and Aug. 9. Pass the test, and a player is good until next year. But those who test positive must enter intervention programs in which they can be tested more frequently and where more positive tests trigger escalating penalties.

At certain steps of the new policy, a player subject to discipline for a positive test for marijuana is eligible for a 10-game suspension, instead of a full year under the old policy. That's why Cleveland Browns wide receiver Josh Gordon is scheduled to return to the team for its Nov. 23 game at the Atlanta Falcons.

Gordon originally was suspended for a full year after testing positive in March. His A sample measured 16 nanograms per milliliter and his B sample measured 13.6, according to multiple news reports. If the A sample is positive, then the B sample need show only trace amounts to confirm the A sample, even if the B sample is below the threshold.

Williams says it is simply bad luck to have an A sample above the threshold and a B sample below because the samples come from the same specimen and, if reversed, a player would pass because if the A sample is below the threshold, testers do not look at the B sample.

"My A bottle was like 15.4 and my B bottle was like 14.6, something where I was right on the line," Williams says. "When I did a little bit of research, I found out how low that (threshold) was."

Williams thinks the NFL insists on a strict standard so that some players are caught, which offers the appearance of vigilant enforcement, even though he says players who pass the tests in late April through early August have what amounts to a free pass to use throughout the NFL season.

"I think if you ask the NFL, they'd say the drug program is for our safety," Williams says. "But I think it's more to protect the image of the league."

The policy states the league's rationale — combining notions of safety and of image — on the first of its 41 pages: "Substance abuse can lead to on-the-field injuries, to alienation of the fans, to diminished job performance and to personal hardship. … NFL Players should not by their conduct suggest that substance abuse is either acceptable or safe."

A WORKPLACE ISSUE

The new policy was hammered out between the NFL Management Council and the NFL Players Association. What do players think about the policy's rules on marijuana? Fourth-year Washington defensive end Jarvis Jenkins says, "It's not a thing we talk about."

The league mostly doesn't either. NFL spokesman Greg Aiello called it "a collectively bargained workplace policy" and declined to make the program's medical directors available for interview.

Denver Broncos linebacker Von Miller, who was his team's interim NFLPA rep when the new drug policy was discussed, served a six-game suspension in 2013 for violating the league's drug policy and tested positive for marijuana as a rookie in 2011. He believes the point of the new threshold is to prevent players from testing positive from secondhand smoke.

"There might be places where you can't avoid it — a concert or at the club — and you can't avoid what other people are doing around you," Miller says. "You have to remove yourself from the situation."

A paper published this month in the Journal of Analytical Toxicology says "increased cannabis potency has renewed concerns that secondhand exposure to cannabis smoke can produce positive drug tests." Gordon argued during his appeal that he tested positive because of secondhand smoke, but appeals officer Harold Henderson upheld Gordon's suspension in August.

The NFL's new policy says "passive inhalation shall be precluded as a defense in any appeal hearing." The old policy did not specifically preclude that defense, though Aiello says it was rejected in every case in which a player tried to use it.

"Someone like myself, who uses marijuana fairly frequently, I will have anywhere from 100 to 200 nanograms in my body at any one moment," St. Pierre says. "So those who regularly use cannabis, they would fail this test with flying colors all the time."

St. Pierre says police and firefighters often face drug testing on the job but that other American workers face it mostly when they are being hired for jobs.

"That's not so much to catch people who use marijuana and other drugs but, to use a bad pun here, to weed out employees who, given all fair warning that these tests are coming, manage to fail them, which probably speaks to other bad work habits," St. Pierre says. "So for the lay person, drug testing is usually used as a filter, to determine if someone will or will not be employed. It is pretty rare that people face, as these players do, on-the-job drug testing."

Robert Farrell, vice president of marketing for CannLabs, a testing lab for medical and non-medical marijuana in Colorado, thinks the NFL's marijuana testing policy is "based on society's moral judgment of what a player should be off the field and less on the science and the medicinal. We have 80 years of reefer madness that has colored and tainted our perception of a medicine."

WILLIAMS DROPS HABIT

In this 2008 file photo, Ricky Williams, then with the Miami Dolphins, is shown during an interview in Austin, Texas. Williams, now retired from the league, was in the NFL's substance-abuse program for years because he had tested positive for marijuana.

Williams won a Heisman Trophy at the University of Texas and an NFL rushing title with the Miami Dolphins and yet is perhaps best known for smoking pot and serving those NFL suspensions.

"It's given me a bit of a reputation that I'll have to deal with for the next 20 years," he says, "until people forget."

Former players such as Lomas Brown, who retired in 2012, have suggested that as many as half of NFL players use marijuana. "That's a little high, but not too high," says Williams, who retired in 2011. "But I'm sure there are teams where it's at the 50% level."

Williams says marijuana offered him pain relief, stress relief and quicker healing times.

"It's easier on your liver," he says. "It doesn't cut your awareness off from your body, the way most pain medications do. It actually increases awareness of your body. So for instance when I played and I smoked, my body would relax and I'd go in the room and stretch a little bit and do some yoga. And relaxing would help my body recover faster.

"It's interesting that people talk about physical benefits. I think there are some psychological benefits, too, especially something like the NFL where the stress level is so high. It helps you relax, and everyone knows if your muscles relax the blood is going to flow, which means more blood, more oxygen, more nutrients, which decreases healing time."

Genifer Murray, founder and president of CannLabs, suggests marijuana is a safer and more effective drug than prescription pain pills, which carry the danger of addiction.

"My God, these athletes are allowed to take Vicodin and Percocet and they're not allowed to have more than 35 nanograms of marijuana," she says. "You kind of have to look at it like that. Marijuana obviously is less harmful and has a different titration than taking pills — and those pills are synthetic, where this is a natural plant."

David Bearman, a doctor in California who testifies as an expert witness in marijuana cases, says cannabis use "decreases reliance on opiates and alcohol, and I think that is a good thing. Cannabis works by the entourage effect, which means all the pharmacological active ingredients in the plant are working in concert to create a euphoric effect."

Williams says he regrets his reputation as a stoner but has no regrets about self-medicating with marijuana. "It worked for me," he says. "It was better for my body. It wasn't necessarily better for my career."

Now that he's retired, he says, he doesn't use anymore, for the simple reason that his pain and stress are gone.

"When I go places, people offer me pot all the time," Williams says, laughing. "And then I have to say, 'Well, I'm sorry, I don't do that anymore.' And they look so disappointed."

Contributing: Nate Davis and Lindsay H. Jones

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